Valkyries

doh wrong username...

To give everyone a little update, the tanks will have two modes of competition, autonomous(this is what we have had for the past 6 years), and a doom style gaming setup(FPS if you may). So each of these tanks will have their own type of web server on one of the PICs, this will connect itself to some type of linux(maybe) game server. So for this game, the tank is your sprite and the death cam is the little wifi camera mounted on each tank. This project should be fully complete with 50 built tanks within two months. More pictures and possibly video coming soon.

let me update the site real quick and I'll post it here. till then here is what we did last year. cows and cow boys. The customer had to program the cowboys to go out and heard the cows. This year will be the first year they are remote controlled. added the links to the original post

http://hak5.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12812

You can see the full article Here I tried to talk to darren about this on twitter(@valkyries), but this probably got over looked. But i keep hearing you guys talk about some type of battle tanks. Well for the past couple of years we have been building these little tanks that would be programmed by our customers at our trade show then each night they would autonomously drive themselves around and battle other tanks. The Black boxes on the corner of the board are IR receivers(to see the other tanks), the blue diodes are IR transmitter(to let the other tanks now where it is) If there is enough interest I can explain the drive system, the tracking system, its ability to not drive off your playing field, Lithium-ion battery charging system. edit: I forgot the bring up that all the PCB(Gerbers) files will be open for anyone to have and the code should be also open for anyone to use with the pcbs. the old design uses 8bit MCUs; two on the top and one on the bottom. So the with the old design you would just program the "A.I" and then set it and let it go. The 7 segment displays tell you how many life's you have left and how many rounds your tank has left. You'd get 99 rounds and 9 life's. The tracks and the gear box are made by Tamiya and are about 20$ worth of parts, the rest of the chassis is made from PCB material. The whole system is powered by two Lithium-ion batteries. Now we are working on the 2009 version of the tank, the biggest change is the tanks are now R/C. But they are driven through a Wifi card built onto the tank. Each tank will also be streaming video, So you now can drive these through your own computer. There are also going to be 8bit and 32bit MCUs, a bit more high tech

two 24" flanked by two m-audio studio moniters, on a monster rig an old iBook, an aspire one netbook

Stepper Motor Application Notes:(From Microchip) AN907 Stepper Motor Fundamentals AN906 Stepper Motor Control Using the PIC16F684 AN822 Stepper Motor Microstepping with PIC18C452 Here is a webseminar: This webseminar introduces three types of stepping motors. The various components that make up each type are explored as well as how they interact to rotate the motor. Subsequent webseminars will be available to expand on topics not discussed here. If you need "samples" of most types of PICs Hope that helps, -Tim edit: - its not stepper motors but if motor control interests you - Make Magazine: Baja Buggy Baja Buggy (Every thing you need to build one yourself) Built these up to teach people about driving a motor.